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Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

Grand Valley State University

Arctic; Geographic Object-Based Image Analysis (GEOBIA); Handheld digital camera; Plot photography; Vegetation Change; Vegetation Cover

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Using Plot Photographs To Estimate Tundra Vegetation Cover In Northern Alaska, Hana Christoffersen Aug 2022

Using Plot Photographs To Estimate Tundra Vegetation Cover In Northern Alaska, Hana Christoffersen

Masters Theses

Plot photography can provide a quick, robust method to measure vegetation, especially in polar environments where logistics can be expensive and challenging. The success and widespread adoption of plot photography in the Arctic hinges on the accuracy of image analysis and data product interpretation. The relative cover of eight vegetation classes was estimated using a point frame and digital camera across thirty, 1-m2 plots at Utqiaġvik, Alaska from 2012 to 2021. Geographic object-based image analysis (GEOBIA) was applied to generate objects and classify the three band (red, green, blue) images. Machine learning classifiers (random forest, gradient boosted model, classification …